Digital currency exchange Coinbase announced on its blog on Thursday that it has raised $100 million in so-called "Series D" funding led by US venture capital firm IVP, making it the first bitcoin start-up to achieve a valuation of at least $1 billion. This officially makes it the bitcoin industry's first billion-dollar startup.

Founded in 2012, Coinbase had previously raised $117 million from a wide range of investors; the latest segment bumps that total up to $217 million. They include Dropbox, Slack, Netflix, Twitter, and Snap. Specifically, Coinbase wants to increase the size of its engineering and customer support teams and open an office in NY for GDAX, the company's trading platform for institutional investors. With a diverse portfolio including GDAX, the Global Digital Asset Exchange, and proprietary Ethereum-based browser Toshi, and a market capitalization exceeding $10 billion, it's no surprise that Coinbase attracted the attention of VC firms like IVP.

"Coinbase has experienced unprecedented growth over the a year ago, and we have now exchanged over $25 billion Dollars of digital currency for our customers", a spokesperson for Coinbase told SiliconANGLE via email.

Coinbase will now have a cash warchest to boost engineering and support teams, open more physical offices and power Toshi to become the catalyst to change cryptocurrencies into a global payment network (as opposed to a highly speculative investment).